Toyman01 wrote:
z31maniac wrote:
Hey, I'm all about cutting.
I advocate a 20% cut, across the board, across all programs, no loopholes/exceptions. Period.
This is the correct answer. If they cant figure out where to cut the budget, cut it all.
That's how SC's budget is done. It's run by something called the Budget and Control Board whose only reason for being is to administer exactly this type of budget cutting. The reason it is there and also its biggest problem is that it absolves anyone holding elective office from taking responsibility for goring anyone's ox or slaying their sacred cow. The Legislature shows up each year to go drinking and chase hookers and they push the responsibility for the hard budget cut decisions onto the B&C board who just slash everything across the board and the legislators tell the populace how those meanies are the ones who cut the budget, they have been trying to rein in these evil people for years. Then they go chase reelection.
It also puts this state in the uncomfortable position of doing dumb things like cutting the state trooper force (down 100 in the last couple of years) or buying worn out school buses from other states after they are done trashing them. Or not fixing the roads. Or having a town set up a radar speed camera system on I-95 to boost town revenue. http://articles.boston.com/2011-03-28/news/29360511_1_speed-cameras-surveillance-cameras-speed-limit
It's long past time to cut the BS out of the budgets (why is there a National Endowment for the Arts, for instance? Why is the Corporation for Public Broadcasting still there when you see 'Made possible by a grant from [insert large coropration here] before/after every show on PBS/ETV?) and focus government on the basics: infrastructure, defense and the few entitlements that might be necessary such as Medicare. Even Medicare has its problems and areas where costs can be cut, those are however based not in what's paid into them but rather on the costs coming out. Prescription drugs are a real budget buster. Price Advair sometime for an eye opener. Viagra is what, $14 apiece? That used to be covered by Medicare but they dropped it in 2007. For that matter, why the hell is Viagra covered by ANY kind of insurance plan?
The defense budget can be cut in many places without harming the 'boots on the ground' that do all the work. I have a buddy who installs those video walls; he put in one down at Kings Bay, GA about fifteen years ago. About five years later, a new commanding officer came in who decided that he had to have the biggest video wall on the East Coast and had my buddy remove a perfectly good and completely operational system merely to replace it with something to suit his overblown ego. That's the kind of stuff that should never happen but does.
Social Security is not going anywhere. It's too firmly entrenched. Might as well get used to it. So some changes need to happen to make it work: 1) raise the wage limit so higher paid people pay into the system 2) pay out based on means testing so those who retire with millions don't take away from those who didn't 3) get the legislator's fingers out of the SS surplus fund (which doesn't really exist anymore).
The National Flood Insurance program has been bastardized. Its original intention was to help those who could not afford private flood insurance. Instead it's morphed into something which allows millionaires to build ego houses in dangerous places and shove the responsibility for their poor decisions onto the taxpayers.
Agriculture subsidies go to the wrong people entirely in many cases. That shi+ needs to stop. Now.
Companies like GE not paying income taxes AT ALL on real profits is stupid. I understand needing to control costs etc but come on now. Down here, Boeing has nearly finished that plant to build 787's. The Interstate nearby has been reconstructed with a 10" layer of concrete on top of an asphalt base, it's to make sure trucks carrying really heavy stuff to the plant don't bust up the roads (but there is no mention of what will happen to the rest of the Interstates used for that transport) and it didn't cost them a dime. Boeing will jigger things around so they don't pay taxes (but their employees will) and when the incentives start to run out they'll go looking for somewhere else to build a new plant.
I got to be friends with the guy in SC who was in charge of the incentive package for the Mercedes plant that was built in Alabama. He read the thing, saw the $253 million in incentives offered, said 'this is stupid. They can have it' and thus Alabama got the plant. There is debate as to whethere Alabama will recoup its investment. By the way: as in many cases, if the incentives run out the company will merely shut its doors and go elsewhere. Check out the case of the Otis Elevator closing sometime.
I could keep rattling on for a while. But instead I'll shut up and go beat on the race car.
